Alphabet to Roll out Google-branded Smart Phone?

June 28th, 2016 by DVDFab_Malcolm13,616 views

A recent report from The Telegraph shows that Google’s parent company Alphbet is planning a Google-branded Android phone, which will make the company directly compete with Apple, and other leading Android OEMs including Samsung, LG, Lenovo, HTC, Huawei, Xiaomi and the likes. This self-branded smart phone is believed to enter the market by the end of this year.

According to the source, Alphabet the tech giant is currently in negotiations with major mobile carriers about expanding its influence in the hardware sector by introducing its own non-Nexus smart phone pipeline. Study shows that, Android’s open source nature has so far helped Google take more than 80% of the mobile market share. Although it has partnered with LG, Huawei and HTC to give them the authorization for designing and manufacturing Nexus devices, Google’s main focus, which is different from Apple, is still centered on the software level, including constantly improving and upgrading Android and the native apps inside the operating system.

However, the situation this time seems to be a little bit different, it is said that Google will have more control over the designing, manufacturing and preloaded apps of the upcoming flagship smart phone. It is assumed that Google made this decision out of three major reasons. The first and also the most critical one is that despite Android being the largest mobile operating system by market share, the blunt fact is that Apple still scores 90% of the profit out of the premium smart phone market. The second reason is that all the Android OEMs are trying to differentiate itself from each other by customizing and fragmentizing the stock Android experience, which results in Google’s inefficiency in keeping the consistency of its mobile operating system. The third reason is that some OEMs are not timely keeping their skinned Android OSes up to date and they even remove some of the native apps which Google thinks customers would love to use.

“Google is deeply concerned by the fragmentation issue Android is currently suffering, and I think Google needs to have more control over its own platform, in Apple’s way of controlling iOS”, says Ben Wood, the analyst from the market research company CCS Insight, who believes that Alphabet makes its resolution of releasing a self-branded smart phone so that Google can gain absolute authorization regarding to the software control, and to further make sure its own services like Google Search and Google Play can run smoothly on the phone.

There are still other analysts who believe that the current Nexus pipeline is also the reason why Alphabet is in consideration of making a brand new smart phone with a Google logo put on it. They argue that although Nexus pipeline ensures the stock Android experience and makes sure that consumers are kept in tune with the latest achievements Android reaches, however, the biggest issue lies in its sales channel which considerably restricts Nexus phones’ reaching range, because they are not being sold via the mobile carriers, but by Google’s own Play Store and its selected retailers at full price. If sold by carriers like AT&T, Verizon and Vodafone, not only can Google receive price subsidies, but also non-Nexus buyers can be potentially attracted. What’s more, under this approach, Google can put the best Android experience into its own smart phones. Three birds with one stone, what a brilliant idea!

While some industry experts still see this with a grain of salt, they think if Google wants to roll out its own smart phone brand, would it be the perfect timing after acquiring Motorola? This argument seems to be quite reasonable. As we all know, after buying Motorola, Google did not make the later stronger, instead Google sold it off to Lenovo only two years later, but retaining most of the mobile patents. This is also why people believe that Google bought Motorola only for its patents. Now the question comes, will these patents be helpful to establish a Google-branded smart phone?

Dear readers, what do you think of Google trying to release its own branded smart phone? Do you think it is possible for Google to follow Apple’s suit to integrate its software and hardware to build its own gardened ecosystem? If this turns out to be true, what will other OEMs like Samsung, LG, Sony, HTC, Lenovo, Xiaomi and the likes do, will they be forced to invent their own operating systems respectively? What do you think of a smart phone with a Google logo on it? Will you line up for it? Don’t hesitate to comment below.